Hermione's Choice and What Came Of It
by JalendaviLady
Summary: A 'what if things had happened a little differently' thought experiment for the Battle Of Hogwarts. AU from the Shrieking Shack onwards. Spoilers for Deathly Hallows, both the book and the Part 2 movie.
1. Chapter 1

Hermione's Choice and What Came Of It

By JalendaviLady

Timeline: Deathly Hallows

Summary: A 'what if things had happened a little differently' thought experiment for the Battle Of Hogwarts. AU from the Shrieking Shack onwards.

Characters: Severus Snape, Harry Potter, Remus Lupin, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks, Minerva McGonagall

Warning: _Deathly Hallows_ spoilers, including things that will be revealed in the _Part 2_ movie.

* * *

><p>Disclaimer: I do not own <em>Harry Potter<em>.

* * *

><p>Chapter 1: In Which Hermione Wants Answers<p>

He was dying. Cover unbroken, but he was dying and the boy did not know, had no clue...

He would die under the cover of his own tangled web, but the boy and their mutual world would lose, would lose everything... The boy, her boy, would live on, but the world around him... and he might never know why...

And then someone was there, and he focused upwards as the boy appeared from nowhere silently and the boy's Muggle-born friend who could make any pureblood look like nature's left-behind plaything was there as well, holding a vial in her hand.

His awareness was slipping away from the pain. "Granger?" The added agony almost swept him away.

"Quiet. I've been keeping the stuff that worked on Mr. Weasley's bites on me, just in case. I want answers."

They began dragging him backwards almost before the sticky flow between his fingers had begun to slow. Potter and Ronald Weasley cast silent spells to seal the opening and muffle the sound the moment his feet were fully into the tunnel.

They had finally listened to his advice, after all this time. And their minds were closed.

Potter's especially.

An annoyance to be sure, as he was used to the boy being an open book the moment he was in range, but it would give him an advantage against the Dark Lord beyond value.

They stopped at a wide point in the tunnel, among the whomping willow's huge roots. The pain had lessened, but it still claimed most of his attention.

A twitch of Granger's wand. "Whose side are you really on?"

He swallowed, something he regretted a split second afterwards. "Yours, Miss Granger," he choked out. He braced himself. "Dumble"

"How dare you even speak his name!" Potter's wand was practically up Snape's nose

The potion master's mind was suddenly drawn to the 101 common spitting hexes generally known by even second-years and how all of them would be fatal for him at the moment. "Potter, you... saw his hand."

"Yes." The wand did not move.

"The ring was cursed, there was no way to contain it, and it was spreading. Another two months... maybe three... and then there was Draco. He... he didn't want a student damaged... Before the year even began, he'd made me promise."

Silence.

"If it hadn't been me, it would have been Bellatrix or Greyback. You know that, Potter. Either a fast end, or a slow one."

Granger whispered, "He didn't want to go through what the Longbottoms and Bill have experienced. Instant death, and there's nothing there to cause pain..."

Snape tried to nod, then gritted his teeth and hissed air between them.

Hands at him again, and a small flask at his mouth. He could recognize that particular potion from vapors alone. From that and the taste...

"E."

Granger looked at his face, got a little closer. "What, Professor?"

Apparently he was worthy of titles again.

"E, if this were the NEWT you have clearly not been studying for. Although, were this the actual test, most situations requiring the tester to taste the pain draught usually lead to grades of Troll. So that particularly correct aftertaste..."

She glanced down, and it was not hard to guess she was blushing.

"You both spend too much time over cauldrons," Weasley interjected.

Snape almost told Potter, then, but he couldn't. Not the least with the others there. Not that he could have told him to his face, anyway. "We need to get back to the castle. He knows it's out of his control now... he'll tighten the guard around it..." His throat felt better and he was fairly sure his feet and knees could hold his weight now.

The Dark Lord's voice everywhere at once, booming out a temporary cease-fire for an hour. All Snape could do was lie still and try not to let the fear of that little room in the shack and of the ground where he had returned as a Death Eater to fast and hard questions three years previous overwhelm him. There was still work to be done, and his cover was not blown.

His cover was not blown! It was a mantra in his heart, keeping the despair of the wrecked world at bay, as it had been since the first day he had simpered back into the Dark Lord's service as a spy and told him that there were other women of purer blood, more deserving of a wizard's love than her, never mind that he had already begun to understand that he and she would never have been a good romantic match for each other at all. Since the first day he had felt like a house-elf with conflicting orders and nothing to do about it but bang his head against a wall and try to hide the bruises from his master.

Silence again at last.

"We need to get back while we can," Weasley said as he looked over his shoulder, towards the Hogwarts entrance of the tunnel.

"Professor, do you think you can walk?" Granger looked as though she were about to rummage in her bag again.

"I think so." With help he got to his feet. "I should be fine until we get to someplace safer."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 2: In Which Snape Blows His Cover<p>

They walked to nearly the end of the tunnel and Snape could see a few Death Eaters still fighting, against their master's wishes. "Looks like the Carrows and Dolohov do not want to give up their fun so soon," he remarked. "Get back under that cloak, stay silent, and get ready to run."

"That looks like Lupin and Tonks," Granger gasped as Potter forced her fully underneath.

"Shush," Snape ordered. "Stay here."

He stepped out into the open area. "Hey! We've got orders! Are you deaf, or merely suffering from delusions of false grandeur? Amycus, do you honestly think that disobedience will help the fact you were overpowered by mere children this evening?"

Five wands were suddenly pointed his direction.

"How dare you speak of orders!" Dolohov roared. "We were told you've been ordered to stay at the shack until the battle is over."

"Seems he who fled the fight is no longer so trusted," Amycus laughed.

"Well," Alecto added, "they do say breeding will tell in the end..."

"At least I am not breaking a gift of the Dark Lord! Do you honestly expect any of them to believe in the boon that has been offered in exchange for Potter's life if you make it appear the Dark Lord is breaking his word even now? His anger will be great indeed if you three buffoons lose him the boy." The words tasted bitter in his mouth, or perhaps it was the blood he hoped the lack of light from a crescent moon would hide.

"And why then are you stalking so close to the castle yourself? You have yet to explain that, Severus," Amycus demanded.

"And why should I have to explain myself to the likes of you? The Dark Lord himself has bade me sit at his right hand!"

He saw Remus Lupin flinch as if burned.

"And yet he has told us you are to sit out the victory!" Alecto laughed in his face, and the other two joined in.

His wand was pointed at her in an eye-blink and in the next ten seconds he had dropped all three to the ground with silent incantations of locomotor mortis.

Alecto screamed, "YOU FILTHY LITTLE HALF-"

Three wands appeared in midair and there was a three-part chorus of "Langlock."

Snape decided to ignore Lupin's dropped jaw for a moment. "And just what has everyone been trying to teach you three about nonverbal spells?" he asked the trio without turning to face them.

"It's not like they had a chance to block us," Granger retorted as she slipped out long enough to collect the three wands.

He looked up at the early morning sky. "A small point but still a point." He turned his attention back to the defenders. "Lupin, don't be an idiot. Get under cover. If these three went hunting on their own, there may be more risking the same."

Tonks swept her wand up towards his face. "And you?"

"I'm nearly eighteen years a spy, Nymphadora. Or is there some other explanation you'd like to put forward as to why I'm taking Potter and company in precisely the opposite of the direction the Dark Lord is waiting for them?"

"And the school? The children?" she bit out. "And don't call me Nymphadora!"

"There would have been a death count months back if I hadn't been keeping the Carrows in check somewhat. Alecto has a way of forgetting that the Dark Lord officially believes half-bloods have value. I couldn't do anything more on my own without losing control and setting them directly on the students."

"I almost believe you," Lupin breathed. "I want to believe you."

There was only one thing he could do. "Kids, Tonks, get inside and get down. Remus and I will be with you in a moment. I'd offer my wand to you in a show of my intentions towards your husband, but I need it to prove myself. Only take a moment."

She looked at him oddly from beneath a shock of pink hair. "Don't you dare think I'll let you live if you dare harm the father of my child, Snape." She stormed off towards the castle, the swish in the grass from three barely uncovered sets of trainers following after.

Alone with the last of his childhood tormentors, alone with the sky and the wind and his wand.

"Severus?" Lupin asked, some level of intrigue flavoring his voice.

"Let's get a little distance between us and this filth. There are some things I still don't want to trickle back to their like, even with my cover blown."

Lupin nodded, and they walked just down the hill towards the castle together while keeping defensive distance, into a bit of tree cover from all directions.

Snape stopped walking and Lupin turned to face him. He caught the werewolf's eyes with his own for a moment. "There is a spell that not even the most skilled Occlumens could ever even hope to make lie, Remus." He held his wand out to the side, towards the deep forest, and saw Lupin's eyes track to about ten feet away from the point. He himself kept his focus on the other man's face as he turned his mind to that last perfect day, before the Sorting, before the train, before everything had gone wrong and they had just been friends forever, determined that no matter what they'd make the Wizarding world their own... together... "Expecto patronum."

The effect was immediate. "Severus..."

"I gave the warning they were being hunted. I couldn't do anything more, even though I tried to beg for her life, and paid dearly for it. And continued to pay dearly for it, after the Dark Lord returned. And Dumbledore said the Dark Lord would be coming back, so I kept my cover, even after."

"Dumbledore." Lupin's voice had a dangerous edge to it, and all of Tobias Snape's old warnings about how his son would certainly be bitten by a werewolf or some other such horrifying thing at that strange school came flooding back. Snape suddenly very much wished to climb the tree he was standing in front of, and that with a full two and a half weeks until the full moon.

"His arm was afflicted by a curse nearly two years ago. At the time he died, he had under a month to live. I told those three longer, but he wouldn't have seen the end of the school year no matter what anyone did. He ordered me to do it, and on that night it was either I, dear Bellatrix, or our mutual acquaintance with the sharp teeth. Fenrir has never been fond of quick kills."

Lupin looked away, clearly distressed. There were more tactful ways to explain, but Snape had chosen for impact. "He chose his end?"

"Not the time, but the method. And please believe me, I would have preferred none of that happen." Which was, of course, in its own way a lie, for it took certain emotions to cast the Killing Curse, emotions hard to evoke against a true friend. Impossible to evoke, really.

Not that he had ever had more than one friend, and she was long beyond this world. But mentioning why and how he had managed to have those emotions, that they were not some twisted thing born out of reluctance to do the deed, was far too dangerous to risk. Besides, the last thing Lupin needed this night was to hear how they had all been used. That would come far too soon on its own.

But his statement was true, for if he could have kept the entire situation from happening, all the way back to that horrible night in Aberforth's bar and beyond, and had been granted the knowledge of all that would follow, he would have.

He swayed on his feet, partly from the stress of memory and duty and partly from the blood loss he likely needed another blood-replenishment potion to deal with properly. If a single potion dose would be enough.

Lupin caught him. "She'll be worried if we stay out here any longer, and they will no doubt be attempting to start saving the world on their own."

They began walking again, Snape leaning on him. "Start? Just what do you think they've been up to all year?"

Lupin's head turned a bit. "You know what Dumbledore ordered Harry to do?"

He nodded weakly; he knew just enough to feel that it wasn't a lie, that Harry had been ordered to weaken the Dark Lord somehow. Dumbledore's prediction about Nagini was proof enough for him that they were all in the endgame now. And nodding certainly wasn't lying; he knew things about what the boy was ordered to do that even the boy did not know yet. "And he's nearly done it. The Dark Lord is nearly vulnerable. We can almost take him down. This could all be over by sunrise." Sunrise. The boy might never, should never, would never see another, if they followed Dumbledore's plan. Which was already ripped to shreds, as Snape was supposed to be Potter's semi-safe passage close to the Dark Lord.

There was something oddly freeing in knowing that there was no way he could follow Dumbledore's plan, the plan he never could have followed at all anyway.

But there was still the matter of telling the boy the truth, the real truth, the painful truth that had been kept hidden for so long...

The castle ahead.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 3: In Which It Is Agreed Nagini Must Die, and Harry Leaves To Decide His Fate<p>

The castle here.

Then there was bright-haired Tonks keeping watch over two young wizards and a know-it-all witch in a corridor, her face growing worried at the same moment the young ones rushed forward to help him down onto the shelf in a niche where a suit of armor had once stood guard.

"Severus! What happened?" Lupin nearly yelled when he finally got a good look in the light.

"That damn snake." He leaned back into the wall. "He tried to use her to kill me. Nearly managed it, if not for Granger here. Doesn't matter if my cover gets blown, not if he's already decided he wants me dead anyway, does it?"

"That snake has to be killed, and soon," Granger announced.

"The snake needs killing?" Tonks glanced at her husband. Snape wondered for a moment if he needed to stop calling her Tonks, but she'd accepted it after rejecting Nymphadora. Besides, with her father dead it was probably a good thing for her to identify with him a bit, to remember why she was fighting.

Lupin spread his hands wide. "I don't know why either, except that this is the second attack he's made with her, counting Arthur two years ago."

Snape looked over at Granger, who was digging in her bag again. "A blood-replenishment potion if you have one, please, and an explanation. Not that I mind the idea of Nagini dead..."

"Voldemort's" - Snape flinched slightly at the name, as he likely always would - "been trying to make himself immortal. That's how he didn't go away that Halloween." Her voice was matter-of-fact, despite the way he, Potter, and Lupin all shivered. "He's been splitting his soul, likely since soon after he was a student, and sticking bits of it in objects, starting with the diary that possessed Ginny Weasley a few years ago. The snake is the only one left." She pulled out the potion and started uncorking the vial.

"Horcruxes? Multiple times?" Lupin gasped.

"Six objects." Harry's voice was abnormally calm. "The snake is the only one that hasn't been destroyed yet."

A soul split into seven pieces. No wonder the Dark Lord had been so fragile that night.

"No wonder he's guarding it," Weasley added.

"So we have to kill the snake, and then Voldemort can die." Granger sounded as if she were reciting from a textbook.

Her words were so nearly correct, and for the first time in her life there was no book that could tell her how terrifyingly wrong she was. And for once, Snape was keeping his mouth shut about the inaccuracy. It was going to be bad enough to tell Potter. "Well, then, it seems we need to kill the snake, and I for one would not at all mind being the one to make the damn thing shuffle loose its mortal coils and join the viper chorus invisible! And him too, although I suspect there are a fair number of dueling claims outstanding."

He drank the potion with a quavering hand.

"Well, we three have already destroyed a horcrux each," Granger noted.

"And I'm certainly not going after Voldemort myself," Weasley stammered. "Getting rid of the bit of him in the locket was bad enough!"

He hoped she had only managed to envenomate him once during the attack. He had no clue how much antivenom was available, nor how the volume-effect equations worked for demonic horcrux snake-of-doom venom. He might not have until dawn, no matter what happened, and there was an odd almost pleasure at the thought he would not long outlive Lily's son once he had done what Dumbledore had decreed must happen.

But how to do this, for they would soon be among many others, and Potter must do this alone? And then he remembered a moment of fear and embarrassment, a thrown jar and the realization that young Potter was not so much like James as like Severus...

"Potter, I have something for you." It was the work of a moment to extract the memories into a little bottle conjured from air, memories of Dumbledore's betrayal and memories of how everything had gone wrong so long ago. It was the boy's right to see how he had come to this night as well as what he must do in it, and as a young man it was his right to choose his own fate.

He pressed the bottle into the boy's hands, cradling them for a moment in his own. "There is a pensieve in the Headmaster's Office. Watch these, and choose the path for yourself this night that you deem best."

Lupin looked at him oddly. "Severus...?"

"The safest place for you is hidden away from the rest of us, Harry, and the safest place for all of us is without you. Take the cloak. Your absence when he pushes through will earn us the little time he will spend trying to locate you among us, even if you go hide under a bush."

"Like a Gryffindor would ever go hide under a bush..." Lupin growled.

"And just about anything else will need advisement from those memories, if it is to be effective. I haven't been a spy for eighteen years without learning something of how my foe's mind works, and I wasn't bluffing when I told those buffoons the Dark Lord had me sit at his right hand recently."

Lupin blanched.

"Be careful and you can decide who wins and who loses. Be not careful and you can do the same."

"I understand, sir." Potter swallowed. Snape suddenly felt a lump in his throat and ascribed it to the effects of Nagini's bite.

"This is the night you've been training for," he whispered, letting go of Potter's hands and allowing himself to touch the boy's face for just a moment, brush the rumpled hair away from the eyes that were so like Lily's just once. He was sorry that his words for once were true, without the slightest hint of manipulation. He would not be responsible for making the boy do what he must. He refused to put any more of that responsibility on himself than he was forced to. If the boy wished to hide under a bush, Severus Snape would not think the tiniest bit less of him for it, but the boy was a Gryffindor and all his training had been directed towards not putting others between himself and evil. "Now go, take the cloak, and watch yourself. The rest of us can fight for ourselves."

The boy stepped away, then faltered for a moment. "I'm sorry. For calling you a coward last year, I mean."

"Just go." He almost wished Potter luck, but no. He would not wish Lily's son luck at joining her, not when he was so little past being of age. In the Muggle world, he would not even yet be considered a man, and yet he had such choices. No, Severus Snape would not wish him luck upon tonight's errand.

He flipped the cloak over himself and his footsteps rang on the stones, fading into the distance.

"And now no one gets to try to turn him in." Snape tried to stand and barely made it. "How many fighters did we start with?"

"The Order, the of-age Gryffindors, half of the of-age Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, Ginny Weasley because she simply would not leave, and the teaching staff," Tonks counted out on her fingers as they began walking down the corridor slowly. "And then Charlie Weasley came through with a group from Hogsmeade, some of the recently graduated Quidditch players, and many of the seventh years' parents."

Silence.

"No Slytherins?"

"Just Slughorn, and you now," Lupin ventured.

"McGonagall ordered them away after Pansy tried to hand over Harry," Granger informed him. "All of them. And she's already pulled her wand on Slughorn at least once tonight. And that with Slughorn still fighting in his nightshirt."

"Damn! There were seventh-years with no affection for the Dark Lord or any of his followers. Nott's been fighting his father's path for so long, and he's a good duelist, and we don't even have him?"

She shook her head.

"And Voldemort wasn't lying about our losses," Weasley added with tears in his eyes. "Fred's gone, most of Hufflepuff..."

"Fred?" Lupin's voice was raw, and Snape's soul felt about the same.

"There was an explosion. The wall and ceiling fell. Nearly took out all of us, too." Granger's voice was subdued.

They were getting close to the great hall now, to the lower parts of the castle Snape was most familiar with.

House Slytherin, abandon Hogwarts entirely? No wonder the old joke that they were all self-serving cowards. No wonder trusting a Slytherin was not done, no wonder they were an island to themselves...

No wonder James and the Marauders had not wanted any Slytherin near their year-mate.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 4: In Which The Previous Dose Of Antivenom Is Shown To Not Be Enough<p>

Tonks sent her patronus onward in front of them, to warn that yes, there had been a spy in the Dark Lord's fold all along and that playing the questions-later game would be detrimental.

It was not long after that when he began to stumble. Lupin and Tonks both caught him, one on each side, as he nearly went down. "Well, we nearly got there, "Lupin announced with false cheer in his voice.

Gallows humor was always a bad sign when it came from a werewolf. There was faint hope that tonight would break the pattern.

Lupin patted him on the hand, then startled. "You're burning up."

Granger's hand was on his forehead a moment later. "Oh no, I must not have given you enough antivenom... I could have sworn that was the correct dose..."

"For one bite with one envenomation," he gasped. "No telling how much venom she got in me."

He knew he was in bad shape when he couldn't say something sarcastic even when he wanted to. For all Dumbledore had insinuated he ought to have been sorted into Gryffindor, the only non-Slytherin option the Sorting Hat had offered him had been witty Ravenclaw. Not that he could have survived for five minutes there with those like the Lovegoods, or that they could have survived five minutes with him. And this whole Deathstick malarkey the Dark Lord had bought into was likely another one of Xenophilius' wild goose chases, so he was in even less of a mood to even think about the less grounded branch of House Ravenclaw at the moment.

He felt himself being lowered to the floor as the world grew colder and he shivered even in his multi-layered robes.

He was dying for a magic stick, a children's story told to scare and frighten, a legend writ large in blood as it was told by students in that special age of false immortality...

Another vial at his mouth, Granger's hand at the side of his face as she told him it was more antivenom, that once it started working things would be better.

He felt himself start convulsing a second later, and was infinitely glad he had already sent Lily's son onward, or the boy might never have known at all... or might not have been willing to leave.

Hands holding him still as he shook, a few various vials of fever-breakers and a little of an internal-use preparation of dittany pressed to his lips one at a time over a matter of a few minutes.

His eyes refocused a bit. Weasley was holding his feet. Lupin and Tonks had each taken the arm they had been supporting, and Granger was at his head, brushing back his hair and wiping spit and acid away from his mouth. "Shh, it'll be better in a moment. Try to be still."

"Granger?"

"Shh. You need to be quiet, Professor."

"Have I ever told you that you are my favorite insufferable know-it-all?" He was still trembling and he felt cold, so cold inside...

"Shh."

"It's been twenty minutes since we came inside," Tonks said a moment later, as he finally began to feel as if his heart had not been transfigured into a block of ice. "There's probably another thirty before we can expect the next attack."

The boy was likely through right now, weighing his options, deciding which way to go, if and where to hide or stand firm, what his fate would be...

Footsteps nearby, and the tug of someone taking his wand from his side. Remus's voice above him, telling him that the only way to keep him safe from the others was to disarm him, at least temporarily.

"Not like I can aim at anything," Snape slurred weakly.

Footsteps closer, and McGonagall's voice nearby. Sound and sight went fuzzy.

He heard Lupin's voice, knew the werewolf was trying to explain using everything he knew.

Raised voices, so many raised voices...

It was getting harder to breathe.

Granger's raised voice. That odd smell that had meant Madam Pomfrey's robes since the first of many times James Potter's antics had landed him in the hospital wing, strangely comforting. He felt himself being lifted slightly, could taste more potions pass his lips and he was long past trying to identify them as she made him drink.

The feeling of being lifted up by many pairs of hands and carried.

And then the sounds changed, and he knew he was in the Great Hall again at last.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 5: In Which The Last Ten Minutes Pass<p>

He had been Sorted here. There had been so many Christmases, both as a child and as an adult. And the silent yearly toasts made to Lily at the Halloween feasts, all these long years.

But the sounds were different now, as his head began to clear and he was laid down on the ground again.

Weeping.

Crying.

Neville Longbottom's voice nearby, and his Gran's was answering and full of pride.

Somewhere Arthur Weasley was singing "A Cauldron Full of Hot Strong Love" and it was the most heart-breaking rendition Snape had ever heard.

Oliver Wood and Minerva McGonagall were arguing about the usefulness of Wood leading an aerial assault when the time came, and judging from their voices all broomsticks were going to be grounded.

"The Dementors would have you in five minutes, Wood," he croaked out.

He was surprised and grateful when Granger's voice rang out a second later. "He says the Dementors would have you all in five minutes, and judging from what I saw in the sky out there, that's being generous!"

McGonagall's voice, very much closer. "He's waking up?"

"Never went unconscious," he muttered. He let his eyes creep open. Granger was sitting beside him, leaning against the support between two of the Great Hall's windows. The night was dark behind her, and he knew it was not merely an effect of the glass. McGonagall was kneeling beside them, worry adding to the lines on her face.

A moment later he realized they had laid him where the Headmaster's place at table normally was. He took it for what it probably was: a sign that the building's acceptance of him into the office itself and his makeshift defense of the students meant he was still the Headmaster of Hogwarts. They were now in a time of direct assault against the very stones of the school, and the children that were the soul of it, and he was Headmaster.

"How long do we have?"

"It's been fifty minutes since the cease-fire started," Lupin reported as he joined them. Granger got up and walked towards the main room; Snape thought she was probably going to stand with the Weasley family. "Officially, we have ten minutes. There's been no sign of movement other than Dementors in the air since we came inside the castle, and they've been staying close to the forest."

He tried to sit up, and with a bit of help he was leaning against the wall where Granger had been, looking out one of the few nearly-clear panes into the night out towards the woods where he knew the Dark Lord lurked.

He glanced up at McGonagall. "Minerva, I'm in no condition to organize the defense and you were present for the first wave. I need you to take charge, the same as you've been doing all night."

"I'll get everyone ready." She walked off.

Ten minutes, and he had no clue what the boy had decided.

Lily's son could already have died and there was no way for Snape to know. Or he could have fled to Hogsmeade and beyond, to try to find a safe place for himself and only himself in the wider world.

Lupin settled down beside him. "I don't know what's harder, the fighting or the waiting." He held out Snape's wand. "At least I know when the full moon is. This is completely different."

Snape took it and put it back in its normal place against his side. "I've been waiting like this for years. At least fighting, the enemy is visible before you."

"Your enemy was visible even when you were waiting, Severus." Lupin was staring off into the darkness as well.

"Only for the past three years. Before that... nothing but waiting for an enemy everyone but Dumbledore thought was dead, finally and completely dead. Over a decade of waiting, just in case the worst thing possible was true."

"And anyone you could have become friends with would have been in danger," the werewolf noted, quite companionably. The reference to the moon had been offhand, but just enough to remind Snape of who he was sitting with.

"Lupin, when he returned and Dumbledore ordered me to rejoin, I was traveling to quick questions and a slow crucio. If I had established many—any, really—personal connections outside the Death Eaters, I probably would have been dead, and they as well. And forget any connection at all to the boy."

"But he tried to kill you and you've broken your own cover, now."

Snape looked over at him.

"So those rules you've been living by don't apply anymore."

There was something oddly hesitant in the other man's manner, and he was being very careful not to meet Snape's eyes.

"Severus Tobias Snape, may I fight beside you tonight?"

It was an old formula, dating back from long before the dueling bans. Dating back from before dueling was established, really, from the days when disputes were settled by seeing whoever could get the most wands pointing the same direction.

Except that the proper formula was requesting aid, rather than offering it, and that meant Lupin was saying a lot about how much he was willing to offer trust and respect.

But answering that request in the proper old form meant accepting a certain level of fealty, and there was no way Snape would. Not after how he had seen such relationships abused.

Still, Remus Lupin had not actively been one of his oppressors in the days of his childhood. And the werewolf had trusted him to make good Wolfsbane Potion without question for over a year, even if he hadn't drunk one crucial dose. He had also been willing to trust, and given the paths Snape had been walking that was one of the rarest things in the world to him.

So there really was only one answer.

"Remus John Lupin, may I fight beside you tonight?"

Lupin looked over at him, eyes wide. "As friends?"

"As friends, if you'll have me. And I won't blame you if we both survive and you want to reconsider after the battle." And he meant it. Except that he wasn't planning on surviving the fight with the Dark Lord, had never been planning on surviving it.

Lupin held out a hand, and they shook on it.

The bell in the tower began to toll.

"Four am. There goes the deadline." Lupin's voice was grim.

Both looked out through the window together.

"The Dark Lord won't have started moving out of the forest until the deadline has come and gone," Snape whispered. "We have at least a few more minutes, Remus. More if he's as angry as I think he'll be." After this long, maybe the boy had hidden. Maybe Dumbledore was wrong, and simply removing every thread the Dark Lord had to life but Harry would be enough, and the boy could simply lead a quiet life and die of old age and still have all these horrors be over.

There was a moment when he felt something, almost like she had felt, just a something that told him everything would be okay, that the sun would rise and fall, that the moon would continue in its own ancient dance, and that the world he had introduced her to so long ago would not fall.

But he knew it had to be a figment of his imagination. Nothing could bring back the un-ghosted dead, and she was too powerfully a Gryffindor to have remained on this side of the veil. Lily Evans Potter had always lived without fear, from the moment he'd met her as she flew from a swing-set to the day she had died.

"So, we just keep watching until something happens?"

Snape nodded slightly.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 6: In Which The Deadline Passes<p>

In mid-nod, something happened.

Both men flinched at the sudden small flash of very green light visible through the treetops deep in the Forbidden Forest. From very close behind them, McGonagall gasped.

The world went blurry. Snape had almost forgotten how the world looked through tears; it had been years since he could risk them.

More flashes of light, multicolored in the still morning air. His Dark Mark burned and apart from clutching at it with his right hand he barely noticed it except for the confirmation it gave.

There was only one death that could cause that kind of celebration for which the Dark Lord would summon after the body fell. Harry Potter had escaped far too many times to be given the chance to run again.

After a lifetime of defending him in what ways he could manage, denying any connection between them at all to both Dumbledore and himself, and generally trying to give the boy the tools he would need to survive in a world that actively wanted him destroyed, Lily's son was dead. After working so long to get past the child's resemblance to his own childhood nemesis, he would never get to know the boy as an adult wizard. Somehow, that felt like more of a loss than the betrayal of her by telling the boy the truth had. He would never really know the child he had taught for six years and worried over for a seventh.

That moment of feeling like she was still in the world was false. She would never have felt like that with her son about to die. Even if the defenders of Hogwarts were fated to triumph, she would not have been unfeeling to his imminent ending.

He was with his mum and dad now, and neither of them would have been happy so close to his end.

Snape took a ragged breath.

Harry was with his mum now. Nothing the Dark Lord could do had any effect on the boy's mind or soul anymore, and as a Legilimens Snape knew well that ultimately the human form was merely a shell.

Which meant his only remaining concerns were Lupin as his friend, the others here, and the wider Wizarding world. And Lupin was a capable fighter, as much a defensive asset as something to defend.

McGonagall kneeling close beside them, voice wavering. "Who?"

No answer from Lupin.

"My Mark burned after the spell," Snape replied with a voice flat from pain and wear and a sincere desire for himself to wake up in a moment in Tobias Snape's home with his books packed to get on the Hogwarts' Express for the first time, his first potions set tucked securely in his trunk. "There's only one person the Dark Lord hates so much as to kill before gloating, Minerva."

Lupin started sobbing.

"It may be best just to tell everyone the fighting is about to start again. We don't have any way to confirm anything we suspect. It could just be that he killed a messenger. But they will be coming. Warn everyone: They. Are. Coming."

He looked over at her, scrubbed at his eyes with a hand to try to get the moisture away so he could see.

She nodded. "They're coming!" she called out to the room, voice breaking.

Snape stayed where he was as the survivors of the first attack slowly reorganized themselves along the broken windows lining the outer wall of the castle, where the clearest approach from the forest was.

"Remus, I'll go through our line and see if I can't do something before any of them can do anything to the children. It looks like we won't be fighting side by side tonight after all."

"Severus, you're barely sitting up. Maybe you can walk. But fight?" Lupin's voice still held grief, raw and wild.

"I'm Headmaster, I have to lead the charge. If I can take the snake out on my own, I will. You stay with Tonks."

After a second, Lupin nodded. "Good luck, Severus."

"Good hunting, Remus."

There was something decidedly canine about the grim smile the werewolf gave him before he got up and walked away.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 7: In Which Snape Leads The Charge<p>

He leaned against the wall, shut his eyes. He would know when the time for him to move came. There was no sense in wasting energy until time for that one last effort, to spend his life as well as he could to defend the others.

There were muffled gasps, and someone asked, "What's Hagrid carrying?"

His wand was smooth in his grasp, the wood smoothed by years of use. It was oddly soothing to sit there, waiting, with the familiar object in his grasp. He had only ever had the one wand, ever since the day he and she had gotten their first year's school things and he had introduced her to their world properly.

Ginevra Weasley screamed.

He could still remember her shock and glee at Ollivander's shop when she finally saw an adult doing magic and had a wand pick her. Good for charm work, the old man had said, and oh the things she had done with that wand.

All of the boy's year was yelling now.

And Lily Evans had known how to fly, even without a wand, from the day he had told her she was a witch. It took starting height, really more of a controlled glide, but no one had ever figured out why she was so comfortable on a broom.

The Dark Lord's voice, and Snape began to pull himself up onto his feet as the voice ordered the boy's body put at its feet.

She'd shown him, but he had been horrible at it, and they'd agreed to never tell anyone, so when he nearly fell off his broom during their first practice there was nothing he could do but hang on for dear life.

Insults raining down on the Dark Lord's followers, through constant orders for silence. Something in him wondered why no Silencing Charms were being used, but that was far off and away in his mind.

Their secret, even now. No evidence she'd ever even told James. The Dark Lord knew something entirely different, another way of being at home in the air. But theirs was art, really. Feeling how one hung in air, and changing it. Given a far enough drop, she could dance in the wind. 'The art of falling gracefully', she had called it once.

He was walking now, slowly stepping between stunned children and shocked adults, as the Dark Lord gloated.

Not until tonight had Snape flown in front of others' eyes. It mattered now, somehow. Thinking he had felt her, that sense that everything was okay... it had sounded nearly like the day she had gotten him to see if he could jump off the swing the way she could. He just didn't know why.

The Dark Lord, voice haughty, demanding any who would challenge him step forward.

But there was no way to carry any real weight, not and be able to adjust in the air. She could have fled on the wind, but only if she had left her son behind in his cradle. She would never have been able to do that; Snape had come to understand that, and had spent years hating and then resenting the boy for that. She could have flown alone, could have flown with the boy had he been old enough and magic enough, but not with a baby.

Snape had timed correctly, and he rolled the wand in his hand one last time as he stepped between McGonagall and Slughorn into the ground between his two worlds, and met the Dark Lord's red eyes as he aimed his wand.

He tried not to look down. He feared he wouldn't be able to do anything if he looked down.

The Dark Lord glared, petting Nagini's unprotected head. "So, my most faithful lieutenant has proved not so faithful."

Snape's throat burned as he realized that the boy's death had finally made the Dark Lord fatally vulnerable.

Bellatrix Lestrange smiled at him from behind her master, her position as new right-hand witch no doubt secured by her constant distrust of Snape, never mind that she had never been able to secure proof of anything.

The Dark Lord's eyes closed. "So, Severus, you never did find a woman of your own kind to replace that filthy little piece of vermin after all. Mudblood, wasn't it, one step above dogs. Didn't even have brains enough to keep her wand on her person while hiding for her life. Imagine, a Gryffindor hiding. She couldn't even be a member of a lesser House correctly..."

Snape found himself charging forward before he consciously knew what he was doing, wand still raised. Silently and without moving his mouth, he incanted Avada Ke...

Without any warning at all, light burst from the wand held at the Dark Lord's side and he felt himself going backwards, up through the air, arcing towards the castle walls.

He understood, desperately using everything she had taught him to try to shed momentum, to land on grass rather than rock. His survival alone could mean something, and if he landed properly and could still fight...

He heard his ribs crack before he realized he was anywhere near the wall.

He was falling, and there was a sound of laughter a long way off.

He hit something, then another something, until finally he thudded to a stop on something that was hard and soft at the same time.

He was on his side, half in shadow. A man was suddenly there, face scarred and his hair streaked with gray, and he knew he should recognize him but couldn't. A woman in an apron, with a wand in her hand.

Everything was so confusing, he was freezing and burning up all at once, and he thought somehow he should be in more pain than he was, which was amazing because there was so much pain...

The man gently held his fingers, placed a hand against the side of his face that was not lying on grass wet with morning dew.

Crying and screams a long way off. Sounds of terror, and screamed defiance. Red flames.

He knew he should care

but at this moment

he thought that

he just wanted

to fall into

sleep

.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 8: In Which Severus Snape Has A Chance To Apologize<p>

Quiet and white light.

He blinked as he lay there, and the world slowly resolved into the sunlit grounds of Hogwarts on a sunny day. He thought it felt like spring, but there was no birdsong and none of the usual sounds of students or professors. He found it somewhat ironic that he was lying in the same place he had just been.

There were robes in front of him, the sort of robes he would have chosen to wear had he not felt the need to constantly be in dueling gear these long years. He put them on and stood.

It was so quiet, and even the wind made no noise.

Wherever this was, it seemed a very lonely place, and not somewhere anyone was intended to stay for very long at all.

He felt weak. Not injured, exactly, but like he had stayed awake too long in his lab or gone too long without a meal. Like taking a sleeping potion and only most of the antidote.

He started walking around the side of the building, into the courtyard he knew so well.

The beech tree was there, and beside it a third-hand broomstick. A familiar third-hand broomstick.

He ran, and there was a flash, a hint of red hair on someone sitting against the other side of the tree.

And then she was pulling him into her arms, running a hand through his hair as he begged into her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know, I tried to stop it and the things I have had to say..."

She kept holding him close, letting him stay there.

"...and the way I treated him... and... and..."

He couldn't say it, just clutched at her and grit his teeth.

"Sev, no one can make you walk such horrible paths again," she told him after what felt like an eternity.

"What I've done was my fault, no one else's."

"Then what about all the children of Death Eaters in your House back in those days?"

"I could have picked Ravenclaw. Or not listened to them at all."

She laughed slightly, but it was not in the least mocking or disparaging. "You knew all these things would come when that silly hat was put on your head? And still lost those House Cup bets with McGonagall?"

"It... it doesn't make it okay, the things I have done," he ground out.

She held him away slightly, so that he could see her standing there, see her eyes and the way her hair framed her face and the way her favorite flying robes moved in the gentle breeze. She gave him a sad little smile, and he could almost feel the grief coming through it. "No, it doesn't make it okay. We all had our choices to make, and all of us in that year seem to have been rather bad at making them."

He stood there, judged. There was nothing he could possibly say.

"But once you knew you were on a bad path, you tried to get off it, Sev. Even if it was self-serving in the beginning. You grew up. You learned."

"No I didn't."

She pulled him close again. "Yes, you did. Could you have grown to care what happened to my son if you learned nothing? Would the Headmaster's office have let you in if you did not care more about the students of Hogwarts than your own concerns? And don't even try to say that you confronted Lord Voldemort tonight for me; if you had stayed in the Great Hall he would not have said any of the things that made you attack."

"Lily, Harry..." He tried to back away, to push himself away. "What I've done... I might as well have killed him with my own two hands..."

She let him go, let him stumble into the building, away from the place where everything had gone finally, ultimately wrong and into the quiet of the Great Hall, down into the hallway where first years waited to be Sorted. He fell against the stone banister, weeping with his face in his hands.

This was a place between.

He didn't know the way out, and he couldn't face her to ask the way out, and he was almost certainly keeping her away from whatever was beyond this place.

Which meant unless Lily left him here, she was as stuck in this place between as he was. And if Harry was already gone beyond, that meant that he was keeping her away from the son she'd died for and the husband she'd died with.

He curled up from the anguish.

Even in death, he couldn't do a single thing right.

Footsteps, then arms around him. "Sev, it's okay."

"HOW CAN IT BE OKAY! I've sent him to his grave..."

"You are no doubt familiar with how technicalities and formerly unknown magical confluences always step in to save my son's precious little head from harm every time Voldemort has ever tried to kill him? You've certainly ranted and raved about it before."

"Yeah, and now one's gone and killed him."

"Severus, please note that I did indeed say 'every time'."

He looked at her with disbelief.

"He brought himself back with Harry's blood, remember? All Voldemort managed with that burst of green light you and Remus saw was to remove his own personal insurance policy. And he's too self-important to check for a pulse himself."

"Harry lives?"

She smiled, nodding. "Molly and Minerva are carrying him up to the hospital wing right now. Bruises and such, and he hasn't slept in a day. He'll be fine with warm food and some rest."

His shoulders were shaking and the world grew blurry.

She held him again.

"Charity says she understands why you could not act, and James and Sirius send their apologies," she remarked into the long stillness.

He drew back, confused.

"Only one person from beyond the veil can meet you here, so it was either one of those two troublemakers coming to apologize or you getting confirmation from me that you've done what you've needed to do."

"Lily?"

"Madam Pomfrey was standing near where you hit the ground, Severus. She's trying to put you back together, and she's doing a good job of it. This place is as far as you get this time, Sev. You survive this. You go on."

He shook his head. "No... I have done too much... there is no way..."

"Severus, in case you hadn't noticed, your soul is in one very intact piece and just about any Legilimens in the entire Wizarding world is going to be able to tell that. You've weakened it through abuse, but you've healed whatever damage has accumulated. And that's beyond the office's vote of confidence."

"What happened to Dumbledore is not a closed secret. What happened to you and James... it's not a secret in the Order, and the Order is what will be in control. And even beyond what I've personally done... I'm a Marked man, Lily. And this time, the authorities know what the damn thing looks like and means!"

"And Shacklebolt was there when you marched forward, and he heard and saw what happened there. His voice and McGonagall's do count for something to many."

"Lily, 'there are'..."

"...'spots that never wash off'?" She smiled slightly and pulled him close for a moment. He felt her hand at his left wrist, and before he could react she had his arm bare to the elbow.

He shivered.

"Severus, you need to look."

He obeyed, and blinked in disbelief.

"See? It's only skin deep. It doesn't touch your soul." She hugged him close for a moment. "And I'm glad it doesn't."

"I should never have listened to them."

"And I should have pressed the issue that night when I knew you were possibly actually listening, rather than chasing you off. There are so many things we all could have done so much better..."

"What happened is not your fault."

"It was no one person's fault. You did your part to cause it, and you've done your part to fix it."

He looked up, met her eyes with his. "You were the only one back then who never used me, never manipulated me."

She looked away. "No, Sev. I made my mistakes, too. I should have taught James a lesson early on, before he was the terror of our year. I should have been the one who let you down at the beech tree, I knew the spell for it. I shouldn't have believed James so easily when he said they had stopped targeting you. I should have gotten you alone during break to warn you about the boys in your House, not confronted you while you were looking over your shoulder to see if Sirius was coming with his wand drawn. I could have set my year-mates in my House against me, and I am sorry I didn't do those things differently even if that's what going to have happened. I was more concerned about you for the sake of you than they were, but I was no angelic being."

He closed his eyes, trying to make sense of what he'd just heard.

"Severus, no human being is perfect. No matter what blood, no matter what courage, no matter what knowledge. No one. You are not perfect. I was not perfect. My son is certainly not perfect, no matter what Dedalus Diggle thinks. We've just got to be the best at being not perfect as we can."

He looked up again. "And what am I supposed to do now, if everything is over?"

She smiled, reaching up to touch his face. "Live. Make choices. Make friends. Make enemies. Make the first-years nervous. Make love, if that's what you want; it's not like we'd have worked out as anything but best friends anyway, and I know you've figured that out on your own or your patronus most certainly would not be a doe, a deer, a female deer, so I won't be slighted. Not even if it were a pureblood listed in Nature's Nobility who you end up fancying."

"Lily!" He honestly didn't know whether to be amused or scandalized.

"I promise I won't watch."

He glared at her ever so slightly, the most he would ever dare, and after a moment they were both softly chuckling.

"And if you really do need to hear what I want..."

"I would very much like to."

"My friend happy. And my son corrected for that incident with the Carrows, but mostly my friend happy. I trust that after all this, my friend will no longer think walking in darkness can ever make him happy."

"No. Never."

She smiled. "Good. And now you need to go back."

Something welled up inside him, and he had to give it voice. "You were my only friend. Even with everything you've said here, you were still my only real friend."

"And we both should have figured that out a long time ago." She kissed his forehead. "But you aren't alone anymore. If nothing else, Remus meant it when he offered his friendship."

"And will it remain offered when he learns of what I told your son?"

She smiled sadly. "That is for you to find out. And I won't lie to you; you're badly hurt. But you'll live and still have choices in how you live. More than that, I can't tell you. Now shh," she said as she pulled him against his shoulder again. "I'll hold you until you've gone back. You may not remember much if any of this for a while, Sev, and that's fine. Promise you won't beat yourself up like a disobedient house-elf if you remember after things you would not have done had you remembered before? Please?"

"I promise. If I remember I promised." He shook his head, ran through the logic of that for a moment. "One hell of a paradox."

They laughed together for a moment.

"That sense of you I had tonight?" he breathed into her hair.

"Was real."

It all faded to black just as quickly as it had come from the whiteness.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 9: In Which Snape Lives<p>

The pain initially came as more of an awareness that he was broken than as a sense of anything actually hurting. He was aware of very little beyond it and a hard something at his back that did nothing to make the agony in his spine any less and seemed to make it quite a bit greater.

"Severus, listen to me. We need you to move your feet if you can."

Lupin sounded far away, but from the way his breath made some of the cuts on Snape's face twinge he had to be very close.

"Poppy's got to see if she's put you together right. Move your feet, Severus."

He barely opened his eyes and his vision was so tunneled that he could barely tell it was not pitch-black night anymore before he couldn't keep them even slitted open anymore.

"Please, Severus. You need to move your feet."

There was a vague memory of falling, of pain, and then of someplace, something, wonderful.

"Severus, come on. Please understand me. You've got to try to move."

The pain was becoming more distinct in his mind. He moaned.

"You're hurt bad, but you need to move your feet. This is Remus. You said we were friends before the battle, remember? Now move so I can stop worrying so much."

Friends, a promise to fight together on a field they knew would claim blood. He finally had a friend again.

"Severus, even a toe wiggle is enough. Just try, please."

He tried. After a long moment of riding a wave of pain that finally blasted him into full consciousness, he realized he was screaming.

Something wet at his mouth, but the pain didn't go away, just had the slightest edge taken away. It was barely enough for him to slip back towards the safety of insensibility.

"Good, Severus. That's enough. Just rest. We've got you."

Like he was going to try moving again, now that he knew he was that badly injured. He snorted, then moaned at the way it made his belly move.

"And it's probably best if you aren't even sarcastic in your head right now, friend, if it's going to make you hurt yourself."

That was probably right, even if he knew the capacity for wit was generally a good sign for him.

"Voldemort did enough damage bouncing you off the battlements, without you trying to add anything else to it."

He flinched and shuddered at the name, at all the pains and slights and harms that it evoked, would always evoke. He was tossed back into the sea of pain as he felt another vial on his lips.

"Severus, he can't hurt you or any of us ever again."

And then the sleeping potion swept him away.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 10: In Which Harry Also Lives<p>

He came to a vague awareness of the world, lying on something soft and puffy. He could feel air on his forearms and tried to cover them. He was Marked, he couldn't let anyone see...

"Severus, be still or you'll hurt yourself more than you already are," McGonagall told him in a voice not much above a whisper. "You are already on more pain potions than is technically safe."

He managed to open his eyes a bit. "Minerva?"

She was silhouetted by moonlight. "You were injured, badly, and if you can't remember much of what happened right now, that's to be expected. It's a miracle you survived at all. Poppy thinks getting you in and out of long sleeves is too much of a stress right now. Those of us present when you showed that... that thing to Minister Fudge have been taking watches. No one who hasn't already seen is going to. We figured you deserve at least that much dignity. But, if it will ease your mind for the moment..."

She reached over and he felt a thin sheet pulled up to his shoulders, over his arms. He gave her what he hoped she would recognize as a look of gratitude, and then let his eyes drift closed again. "Remus is… he can come."

"I'll make sure Poppy and he know that." He felt her softly squeeze one of his hands through the sheet. "The war is over, the students are safe. Just go back to sleep and let yourself heal. I daresay I can keep things under control for summer break, even if the seventh-years appear to have decided going home was merely a suggestion."

"We'll need input from some of them on what happens next year," he mumbled. "And if any of them want to help clean up, for closure, they should be allowed."

"Spoken like a true Headmaster." He opened his eyes long enough to see her face and almost thought he could see tears in her eyes. "I'll see to it. Oh, and I have a message for you."

"Hm?"

"Potter wanted me to tell you that he is fine and that Voldemort is absolutely, definitively deceased."

He failed to suppress a painful shudder at the Dark Lord's name, and then McGonagall's words hit him.

Potter was fine. He was alive, at the very least. Somehow things had worked out in the boy's favor, although Snape had no clue how Lily's son had managed to get through that night. He had been lying on the ground at the Dark Lord's feet!

"How?"

"He said he would explain once he thought you were in a condition for it. He's been quite taciturn about the entire year, and that night in particular. Remus has been just as quiet. Ronald Weasley claims to have missed much of what was going on, and Miss Granger won't say anything beyond that they all seem to have passed the Real World Exam."

He allowed himself a small smile and a tiny yawn. "She would say something like that."

Lily's son was alive, Hogwarts was secure and sleeping, and Minerva had shown herself perfectly capable in the past of handling the normal daily disasters of the school.

Yes, he could let himself rest...


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 11: In Which Snape Wakes Up Properly<p>

He woke to bright light, and he kept his eyes squeezed shut to defend against it.

He could smell pain potion on his own breath and he ached. The pain was more noticeable than when he had spoken with Minerva, but it was still nothing near what it had been even when he had been falling.

Falling.

The Dark Lord.

The insults heaped on Lily's memory.

Lily's son.

His eyes snapped open.

He was in the hospital wing at Hogwarts—he'd been in it often enough as a young man that he doubted he'd ever forget that ceiling. The light was coming through a window somewhere above his head. A curtain was wrapped around the bed, and to judge from the shadows there was another set up around it as a second layer. He could tell he was wearing hospital clothes with short sleeves, but a sheet had been pulled up over his arms.

He was weak and hurt in ways that told him he had been injured and then magically repaired, and there were other pains from unmended damage.

Which meant that hell of laughing Death Eaters had been real. He hadn't felt enough when he'd woken up before for it to be real. Or he'd simply been too damaged to remember clearly.

That still form at the Dark Lord's feet...

But Minerva had given him a message from Potter. How in the world had the boy pulled off such a stunt? And how in the memories of the founders had he been able to claim that the Dark Lord was really and truly gone, when the boy had never managed to detect the piece of soul within himself in the first place?

There was a memory of something, a warm spring breeze and something wonderful, but it was blurry and senseless.

"Finally decided to wake up?" Remus stirred in the chair beside the head of Snape's bed. "Minerva said you had woken up last night, but she said you were really disconnected from everything."

He mentally floundered for a moment, trying to place why Remus John Lupin was now 'Remus' to him instead of 'Lupin'.

They had sworn to fight together, in the still before the attack. They had called each other 'friend' and shaken hands. And in that brief period of awareness on the ground, which he could just faintly recall...

He had a friend now. He couldn't count all the friends, real friends, he'd had in his life on one finger anymore.

But that didn't change the fact that he had sent the boy marching off to his doom. Even if Potter had in fact managed to exploit technicalities again, he, Severus Tobias Snape, had in fact given the boy information designed to lead to his death.

"The celebrations are nearly over, at least the ones here. I think the sixth-years finally started recognizing the benefits of sleep. It certainly took long enough; they've been casting wakefulness charms at each other for days. The Gryffindor seventh-years were going to save you some of the cake, but Madam Pomfrey told them you weren't going to feel like eating anything with any bulk to it for a while. The house-elves have really been outdoing themselves; they got involved in the fight, so this is the first feast that's really been theirs too. Hermione thinks they're eating, sleeping, and celebrating in shifts. There was this apple pastry thing last night..."

"How many of the seventh-years made it through?"

"Everyone who made it through the first part of the fighting. Neville has a clump of girls following him everywhere he goes now. Nott's a bit beat up, but his broomstick got jinxed and he got off safely."

"Nott was in the fight?"

"Yes, and he was brilliant. Turns out there's been a very quiet movement in Slytherin for years—mostly among graduates, and to hear them tell it, they've been extremely careful that you never heard about it. So, when he got kicked out of the castle with the rest of the House, he went to go round up the cavalry. When the second half of the fighting started proper, they came flying over the top of the castle. The Death Eaters didn't know they were coming until the first round of hexes hit them from above, and it was a very dark night. So a good bit of the general Slytherin image and reputation seems to have been much improved."

"Good." He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked over at Remus as something hit him. "Neville Longbottom, with girls following?"

"Neville Longbottom was the hero of the hour, Severus. And his Gran is never going to let anyone forget it. Ever."

"And this happened how?"

"Well, after you'd had your five-minute stare-down and flying lesson, we were all fairly well cowed. Except that Neville charged forward. He was disarmed almost instantly, of course, and Bellatrix had herself a good cackle at the entire situation. I still haven't heard an accurate account of what happened next—I was a bit preoccupied at that moment, you understand—but the next thing anyone knew, he'd pulled Godric's sword out of the Sorting Hat and beheaded the snake. And when everyone looked back at Voldemort, Harry was gone, so the fight was on." Remus looked over at him, and apparently caught his look of discomfort. "You're never going to be okay with hearing his name, are you?"

"Remus, if you knew how many times he personally used the Cruciatus Curse on me, the rest of your hair would go gray. And that's not even counting all the things I've seen happen."

The werewolf blanched for a moment before continuing. "Harry had flipped James's old Invisibility Cloak over himself and run for our lines. He just kept casting Shield Charms and such whenever it looked like a Death Eater was gaining the advantage in a fight. Molly Weasley was in a personal duel against Bellatrix Lestrange, but Neville hit her from behind with a muscle-seizing curse he had used on him his first-year, so both of them are being credited with that victory. His Gran's also been talking about that incessantly. And at that point, You-Know-Who was the last one standing on his side. Harry flipped off the Cloak, they postured at each other for a bit, and the feared dark wizard managed to off himself with his own reflected Killing Curse."

"You cannot be serious."

"No, I'm Remus. And yes, it happened just like that. Clean kill, and no one had to become a killer to end him. Only spells Harry cast the entire night were to disarm, muscle-bind, or protect, and we haven't even been able to start counting the lives he probably saved by doing that."

Only those weren't the only spells Harry had used. In that fight, likely. But not in that night. And despite the general allowance of actual wartime, the boy should never have cast that spell. Lily had been angry enough at his own youthful indiscretions, which had never edged anywhere near the Unforgiveables. For her son to have been capable of such a thing... and after he'd experienced being on the other end of it, no less!

The boy was getting a lesson he'd never forget once Severus was on his feet and capable of being properly fear-inducing again.

But Remus did not need to hear of such things, not now.

"Tonks come through the battle safely?"

"Yeah. Dora's fine. Andromeda's livid, though, both of us fighting with her babysitting."

Snape blinked.

"You already have a child together? And you were both fighting? Damn, Remus, that's how war orphans happen! And worse. The kid could have ended up like Neville, visiting the two of you in St. Mungo's at Christmas. If we hadn't gotten there when we did, if Hermione had wanted any more explanation before we made our way towards the castle…"

"And the world Umbridge wants would have let him have any sort of a life, even though we already know he didn't inherit my condition? We want him to have some kind of a future."

Snape let the matter rest, looking up at the ceiling and trying to evoke a sense of long suffering. "I suppose you have pictures."

"Well, Tonks has them right now. But I can bring them the next time it's my watch. Everyone else is shifting their hours around, but I've got the afternoon one every day. Easiest way to make sure we don't accidentally schedule me for full moon night and have to juggle everyone else to cover—and don't worry about the potion, there's two weeks left and Slughorn's already started on it. Hermione's supposed to be coming up in a bit, and I think Molly is supposed to take the first half of tonight, if anyone can drag her away from trying to get Harry and Ron well-fed again. Those kids went through hell and back this year."

"Minerva told me Harry said he was fine."

"If fine means scrawny-with-all-ribs-showing along with bruised-from-hitting-the-ground-with-no-natural-padding, then yes, he is fine. Harry and Hermione spent the entire winter without a reliable food source. She claims they were raiding hen houses for eggs and sneaking through Muggle shops under the Cloak, leaving money as they left, whenever it got so bad they couldn't stand it anymore."

"No wonder Minerva said Granger was calling it 'The Real World Exam'."

Remus nodded. "They ate themselves sick after the fight. Apart from a few days at Bill and Fleur Weasley's, Hermione and Harry hadn't had a decent meal since last autumn. They're going to have to readjust to even having normal amounts of food around. I doubt either of them will be able to handle a proper feast for some time."

"And certainly not that apple pastry." Granger stuck her head around the curtain. "They just made another one. If you get down there in the next ten minutes, there might even be some left."

Remus brightened. "I'll be back tomorrow, Severus." He left.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 12: In Which Harry Presents Himself and Revelations Occur<p>

Granger claimed the vacant chair, placing a book on the bedside table. "I thought I wasn't going to have someone to talk to."

"Understandable. Now, what is this I hear about a Real World Exam?"

"I am never taking anyone's cooking for granted ever again." Her robes were baggier than they should have been, her cheekbones too defined. "And none of us knew medical spells, not well enough to actually use. If I hadn't had essence of dittany with me..." She shuddered, looking away.

"I was told you had passed, Miss Granger."

"Barely." She met his eyes. "We all nearly died, several times. We didn't even make it past the beginning of the school year without Ron Splinching himself."

He didn't ask permission before seeing what he could find out. A flash of Potter screaming on a bunk, Weasley with blood drenching his robes, quiet figures huddled around a fire and two tiny fish...

"Most wizards and witches never go through something that could go that badly. I daresay young Mr. Malfoy would be crying for his mother within a fortnight, and I suppose his father would be having a nervous fit the first night, calling for his house-elf. For students who had never gone hungry before, you did fairly well."

"Harry had."

He carefully tilted his head on the pillow, to face her better. "When? When has the famous Harry Potter ever gone hungry?"

She looked at him, visibly confused. "You don't know?"

"Obviously not."

"But I thought everyone knew, or at least everyone in the Order. Why he didn't like staying with his aunt and uncle."

"Because he couldn't be Mr. Wonderful among the Muggles the way he can get away with in our world."

A voice spoke from somewhere near the foot of the bed. "No, because was raised on table scraps and forced to sleep under the stairs until Aunt Petunia realized someone in the Wizarding world knew that's what they were doing." Harry lifted the Invisibility Cloak so his front was exposed as he walked over to kneel beside Hermione's chair.

"Harry, Madam Pomfrey said..."

"...that she wanted me under observation for a week, because no one knows what coming back after being hit with the Killing Curse in the chest does medically and she wants me here if something weird happens. It's not like I've left the Hospital Wing, Hermione."

"But..."

Snape cut in before Granger could say anything more. "Potter, just this once, and only just this once, please keep breaking the rules. What the bloody hell happened?"

"Well, before I start, we got the memories back out of the pensieve, so they aren't just lying there for anyone to stumble upon." Potter blushed, as well he should, given that he was the sort of wizard most likely to look into a pensieve without permission.

There was silence for a moment.

"Harry doesn't know the spell to get something back out of a pensieve, and I hadn't actually done it before, so... I accidentally saw," Hermione whispered.

He stared at her. The little know-it-all, privy to the humiliation at the beech tree? Something about the tree stuck in his mind, but he shoved it away.

"We haven't even discussed it between ourselves, and there's no way I'd tell anyone else, Professor." She was looking away, nearly crying. "I didn't know what was there, just that it shouldn't be just sitting there."

"I've got them in the vial, and the vial's in my pouch, Professor Snape. Hagrid told me when he gave it to me, that it's just about impossible for someone other than the owner to take anything out of it, so they should be safe until you're in a condition to deal with disposing of them."

Snape stared them both down for a moment, each grudgingly meeting his eyes. "And I have your silence?"

"Of course." Harry answered instantly. "Same as you've had it before."

"There's no way I'd tell," Hermione assured him.

He couldn't detect any deception from either of them. "Then, Potter, I suppose you'd better continue your story."

"Remember how he brought himself back three years ago?"

"Blood magic. I never cared to learn the details, as I refuse to even dabble in it. Nasty business."

"It was my blood he used."

Snape arched his eyebrow. "Continue."

"Apparently it gave me a connection to this world that even the Killing Curse couldn't break. I stepped forward at the last moment before he was going to start the battle again, and didn't try to defend myself. There was this white place, and then it turned into King's Cross Station, of all places." Harry kept his voice low, but wonder was shining in his eyes. "And I was told I could go on or come back, so I came back."

There was something familiar about that description, oh so familiar.

"Professor? Is something the matter?" Hermione hesitantly put a hand on his forehead.

"Flashes of memory. Minerva said it was normal if I didn't remember everything."

"Lupin said you barely survived." Her voice wavered.

"He also said you were still conscious when you hit the ground," Potter whispered. His face was full of indecision for moment, then he reached over to hold one of Snape's hands through the sheet. "You should have died, and you never got knocked out..."

"How badly was I injured? No one seems willing to tell me that."

"Your back..." she started, then stopped, looking away.

"Broken, two places. Madam Pomfrey was barely able to fix that." Potter joined her at admiring the stone floor.

"Ribs."

"Skull."

"Both arms."

"And legs."

"Systemic general blunt force trauma," she choked out, withdrawing her hand.

"And after a week of work and pain potions, you still look like you should be dead."

"If it weren't for you two back in the Shack, I would be." They both looked up. "Thank you."

"Didn't want to see anyone else die," Potter muttered.

"Even if you'd been against us, I'd rather you'd been imprisoned than dead." Her voice was firm.

There was silence for a few moments.

"Lupin already told me what happened when you were brought from the forest, Potter. Which leaves one matter between us two."

"I trust you." Potter's voice was firm. "I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive you for some of what you've done, but I can trust you. And you gave me the truth, as best as you knew it. So far as I can tell, Dumbledore suspected during the Triwizard Tournament or earlier. He knew the Occlumency lessons were never going to work. There's no way I could block something from entering my mind when it was already there."

"Potter, you couldn't even keep me out of your mind."

"And given that Voldemort couldn't break into yours, I'd consider you the harder challenge."

He flinched, painfully, at the name.

"Professor?" Hermione's hand was back on his forehead.

"I'm never not going to react," he bit out. "Even if everyone else were to manage to get over their fear of the unknown, for me he was very much a known enemy."

"I'll try to keep that in mind." Potter gave him a weak smile.

Then the rest of what the young wizard had said filtered through the sudden agony. "And I will thank you for the compliment."

"You weren't mis-Sorted, either," Hermione added. "Just brave in a very Slytherin way. None of us could have gotten even close to staying hidden like you have. Every time any of us tried Polyjuice Potion, we've always given ourselves away."

"We have trouble just keeping quiet under this Cloak."

"And I can hear you in there, Mr. Potter. Bed! Now!" Madam Pomfrey pushed the curtain out of her way.

"But..."

"No buts, young man. Now."

He looked at Snape, obviously trying to appear as helpless as possible.

"Potter, be a good young wizard and listen to your elders. And leave the Cloak with Granger."

He trudged off.

"And as for you, Headmaster: bread sopped in soup, potions, and sleep."

"But..." He was finally getting answers. He was getting appreciation for just how much hell he had gone through in keeping the world and James Potter's little rule-breaking brat as safe as he could for everyone, after how many years? James's son was acknowledging that he, Severus Tobias Snape, was a formidable, worthy opponent. And now he couldn't even stay awake to enjoy the moment?

"No buts, Headmaster. You are quite lucky to be alive."

And with that she shoved the first piece of bread into his mouth.


	13. Chapter 13

Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

><p>Chapter 13: In Which Snape Thinks Like A Headmaster<p>

Days followed of half-aware eating and taking potions. Faces came and went, and sometimes Hermione read out loud to him from whatever she was reading at the time until he drifted back under, just to give them both something to do.

After what felt like it had to have been at least several days, Remus was there again in the afternoon sunshine, looking a bit weary.

"Did something happen with the students?" Snape spoke without thinking, fully awake. There were well over a thousand disasters that could happen during a normal day at Hogwarts, and nothing was normal now.

"No. Of course not." Remus drew back, with a mix of concern and outrage flashing across his face. "Not with damn well my entire family in the castle helping me make sure of that. And especially not with my son within a night's run of me!"

"Oh. The full moon was last night?"

"Yes."

"You just looked like you'd been up all night fighting. I thought something might have happened. Not that you caused something yourself."

Remus settled back down. "You really do think like a Headmaster."

"No, I speak like a professional duelist who has voluntarily decided to extend his protection to several hundred little under-trained monkeys with sticks, many of whom know just enough about magic to get themselves killed in odd, interesting, and terrifyingly original ways."

"Severus, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but that seems to have been the working definition of a Hogwarts Headmaster since the moment Hufflepuff laid the first stone in the lowest dungeon onward. I suppose I just recalled a distinct feeling that you have problems with my kind." He looked away, clearly uncomfortable.

"Remus..."

"Which I can understand. Greyback was giving us a bad name years before he bit me. And Wolfsbane Potion is a very recent development."

"Remus..."

"So I suppose you offering your friendship meant fighting against some heavy prejudices, and I appreciate it, I really do..."

"Remus John Lupin, would you please listen!"

Remus looked up at him, shock in his eyes.

He dropped his voice enough that hopefully no one besides Remus would hear. "I am a true half-blood, Remus. You know how many mixed marriages occur without one partner knowing the other is magic. He tried to beat it out of his wife, and then he tried to beat it out of his son. And when he couldn't stop me from accidentally doing things like all Wizarding children do, he turned to stories of what might happen if I left our town to come to Hogwarts. When I wrote home the first night to Mum about how Lucius Malfoy claimed there were werewolves living in the Forbidden Forest, he had his way to try to make me come home permanently. By the time Sirius and James tried to expose me to you during the full moon, my reaction was just the culmination of several years of forcibly acquired fear and constant abuse - you four at Hogwarts, my father at home - for simply existing. Prejudice the way most think of it doesn't figure into it, just the thousand and one things I was trained to think could go horribly wrong. And as I said, I had no idea last night was the full moon. I haven't been awake often enough to count the days."

The pain spiked for a moment and he lay there, just breathing with his eyes mostly closed. He really shouldn't have spoken so long at once.

It took a few moments for Remus to get over his shock. Apparently the Marauders had never considered that their favorite target might have had other tormentors.

"But Hermione's been reading to you…"

"It was something to focus on besides the pain whenever I woke up." He rested for a moment. "I suppose Poppy has me down to the maximum safe pain potion dose, now that I'm more stable?"

"That enough?"

"Tolerable." He was feeling tired enough to sleep again now. "Keeping the lights dim helps. I don't know why, but having voices nearby helps. I don't whether or not reading things aloud that I know by heart works better or worse than things I haven't read myself, but tell Granger she's welcome to try both. Having my arms uncovered will wake me up unless a sleeping potion keeps me under, and it probably always will." He rested again.

Lupin patted his hand. "I'll make sure the others know."

Snape closed his eyes, shifted a little, and cringed.

"Careful."

"How much longer does Poppy think..."

"... you'll be in bed, or be in the Hospital Wing?"

"Either. Both."

There was a silence. "Weeks at the very least. Not feeling this bad, not after another week or two, but there was so much she had to mend and only so much magic can do..."

"Has the Ministry decided what happens to Hogwarts next year?"

"Not yet. The Board Of Governors had been packed with Death Eaters and purebloods like Umbridge, all the other members have been under Lucius's influence for years and years... Kingsley's still trying to figure that mess out, much less anything else like professors. And no one wants to approach the question of who the rightful Head Of Hogwarts actually is, given the conditions of your appointment."

"That's an easy problem to fix."

"How is that an easy problem?"

"Dumbledore had only been training me to be Headmaster if the Dark Lord ever took the Ministry - not to be a Headmaster under normal conditions, which is what Minerva was trained to be. Also, I have been continuously under the control of either the Dark Lord or Dumbledore for my entire adult life. I want time to adjust, and being officially in charge of the rebuilding and restructuring of Hogwarts won't give me that, not without risking harm to the students."

"And what would you be doing?"

"I'd like to be back in the Defense classroom. And taking care of my House - Horace doesn't have the background to even start understanding what some of the students are going to be going through once the school year starts again - if Minerva will accept me back in that post. And, if she and the Ministry will have me, it might just be a good idea if the new _deputy_ was someone the Head's Office has already accepted once before."

"Which leaves Transfiguration and Muggle Studies as the only openings, unless..."

Snape opened his eyes again in surprise. Surely they would know by now. The Malfoys had all been there. Draco would have talked, surely. "Charity's dead, Remus."

He instantly looked shaken to his core.

"She's been dead since before the Ministry fell. No one knew?"

"So many people have disappeared. We just assumed..."

"Remus, she was of no use to the Dark Lord as either a source of information or as a hostage. He personally killed her himself. And don't bother looking for a body, because you won't find one."

"I'll tell Minerva and the others."

There was another silence.

"Minerva probably already had her replacement picked out last spring."

"He's a Muggleborn who fled overseas. First we have to find him."

"And I thought rebuilding _might_ be the easy part. Any likely candidates for Muggle Studies?"

"I don't think anyone has wanted to admit that Charity could be gone."

"Minerva's pureblood, isn't she?"

"And why would that matter?" There was the slightest layer of growl in the question.

"Because she may not realize how inaccurate the entire Muggle Studies curriculum has been. It's been that way for generations. Which means the OWL and NEWT scores are functionally useless. All of them."

He could barely keep his eyes open now.

"There's time left for all that, Severus. I'll let Minerva know not to trust the scores."


End file.
